Food History of Alghero

Key eras

1354, the Catalan repopulation

Pere IV of Aragon took Alghero in 1354, expelled the Ligurian and Sardinian population and resettled the town from Catalonia and the Balearics. The language, the street names and the cooking arrived together, which is why the old quarter still calls sea urchin bogamarì and still writes its pastry recipes in Alguerès rather than Italian.

The coral centuries

From the late Middle Ages the reef off Capo Caccia made Alghero a red coral port, and the trade paid for the bastions that now carry the aperitivo terraces. Coral gave the coast its name, the Riviera del Corallo, and tied the town's economy to boats rather than to the interior long before tourism arrived.

1899, Sella & Mosca and the Nurra

Two Piedmontese, an engineer and a lawyer, planted vines on the malarial Nurra plain outside Alghero in 1899. The estate reclaimed the land, spread Torbato cuttings that had almost vanished, and grew into one of the largest single wine properties in Europe, now over 540 hectares under vine.

1936, Fertilia and the post-war settlers

Fascist land reclamation drained the Calich lagoon and built Fertilia as a planned village in the 1930s. After 1947 it was settled largely by Istrian and Dalmatian families displaced from the Adriatic, adding a second, quieter food culture a few kilometres from the Catalan old town.

1971 onwards, the focaccia and the tourist decades

Antonio Gavino Fiori and his wife Maria came home from Australia in the seventies and bought a bar on Via Garibaldi. The filled Sardinian focaccia they built there is now a registered recipe and the town's most copied snack, arriving alongside the charter flights that turned Alghero into a food destination.

Immigrant influences

• Catalan and Balearic: Six centuries of Catalan settlement left Alguerès as a living language and put aragosta alla catalana, paella and menjar blanc on Alghero menus.
• Ligurian and Genoese: Pre-1354 Genoese rule and later Ligurian fishing families shaped the town's boat-based economy and its habit of cooking whatever the day's net produced.
• Istrian and Dalmatian: Families resettled at Fertilia after 1947 brought Adriatic habits to the lagoon villages, still visible in the long-hours bar culture along Via Pola.
• Piedmontese: The founders of Sella & Mosca arrived from Piedmont in 1899 and turned the Nurra plain into the vineyard belt that supplies most Alghero wine lists.

Signature innovations

• Aragosta alla catalana: cold lobster under raw tomato and sweet onion, a Catalan idea worked in Sardinian waters
• Paella algherese, the Valencian dish rebuilt around local fish and Sardinian rice at Maria Pia
• Focaccia sarda ripiena, the registered filled focaccia that Bar Milese has cut since 1971
• Torbato, an almost-lost white grape kept alive and propagated from the Nurra plain
• Akènta Sub, sparkling wine matured on the seabed off the Alghero coast